This invention relates to drive arrangements for sliding doors in motor vehicles.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,715 discloses a drive arrangement for sliding doors of motor vehicles in which only the drive motor unit is located inside the wall of the vehicle. This provides an advantage over the arrangement described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,746,025, in which drive cables which serve as force transmission members must be passed through openings in the vehicle wall since it requires only a single, easily sealed opening in the wall for passage of the drive shaft.
In the context of the present invention, a drive motor unit is understood to mean any unit containing at least one drive motor. As a rule, however, the drive motor is followed by a transmission and a safety clutch and that combination is referred to herein as a "drive motor unit".
The above-mentioned disadvantage of the arrangement in U.S. Pat. No. 5,746,025, i.e. the need to thread drive cables through openings in the vehicle wall, is also present in the arrangement described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,046,283, which incidentally employs a cable roller having two winding zones.
A common feature of the prior art arrangements discussed above is that they do not meet the requirements for a modern vehicle installation with preassembled modules.